February Trad Games Design Contest: Let's Make a (Not Crappy) Anime RPG

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > February Trad Games Design Contest: Let's Make a (Not Crappy) Anime RPG

Hedningen: May 4, 2013; Enough sideburns to last a lifetime.

Yeah, this looks interesting. Is it too late to sign up, or are we still good? I think I can manage this given my current time standards.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2017 03:02

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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 10:28

Hedningen: May 4, 2013; Enough sideburns to last a lifetime.

Man, Shonen is delightfully broad, but entirely worth it. Already got ideas to make things fit the genre - in cases of broad things like this, we should be aiming to get the core "feel" if I understand correctly, so there's a lot of fun to mind.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2017 23:16

Hedningen: May 4, 2013; Enough sideburns to last a lifetime.

Burning Fires of Youth!!! The Demon Lord's Return!
The gates to the demon realm opened by Lord Shura closed 15 years ago thanks to the hot-blooded efforts of Japan's greatest youth gang, but shutting the gates has done nothing to stem the spiritual powers manifesting through society and the occasional stray demon, so buckle up and prepare to punch your way through rival gangs, rogue demons, and sinister conspiracies! Utilizing the Burning Fires of Youth system, this role-playing game will let you and your friends experience the world that sprung up after the events of the original show. Form your own gang, design your own spiritual powers and martial arts style, and prepare to enter a world of thrilling fights, manly emotions, and terrible demons � not to mention the trouble of staying delinquent when the cops are out hunting monsters and your rival gangs can shoot fireballs! Gather your gang and prepare your spirit to burn on!!!!

Progress so far
Sketched out the skeleton of a system using my personal albatross, mah-jong tiles, because it creates a cool method for counters and makes things feel even more anime by being non-standard and kinda weird. Looking into a more storygame-type system format for this - while fighting might naturally lend itself to crunchier systems, I'm trying to keep things loose enough for a relatively narrative fail-forward system. Skills have been designed for open-ended design - don't know who I'm ripping off for this, but they're player chosen, with starting characters getting one keyed to each attribute, no matter how nonsensical. Current example is hacking via punching things, sheer fighting spirit, or somehow talking a computer into doing what you want.

Already a bit intimidated by some of the cool system logos here - I feel like I should get on doing that.

Hedningen fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Jan 30, 2017

# ¿ Jan 29, 2017 06:30

Hedningen: May 4, 2013; Enough sideburns to last a lifetime.

Yeah, I added a lovely logo to mine. Pretty basic stuff, but this is an exciting contest.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2017 05:15

Hedningen: May 4, 2013; Enough sideburns to last a lifetime.

Seeing as Covok inspired me to do the same document thing, here's a link to my current design document, because I feel like I'll forget to post it up due to job stuff. Might as well treat it like a fake Kickstarter.

Burning Fires of Youth!!! The Demon Lord's Return Update 2: Even Delinquents Need Rules!

Look here if you're interested in seeing the progress that's happened so far, and expect things to keep changing over the next few weeks as the rule text is developed and edited.

For those who would like a more complete picture without sifting through a basic text document, here's what you can expect!

Combat is ready, and we've taken care of the heavy lifting so far, including helpful lists to detail the order in which actions occur.
Full details on the mahjong based system - including ways to make substitute decks if you're not a backer getting the customized Mahjong set pledge reward.
Character creation rules, along with the first set of Fighting Style and Spiritual Power building blocks - as playtesting continues, we're hoping to expand on these and balance them further based on actual play.
Basic rules for Background Characters, enemies, and a few tips to help you use them.

So what's next in line? Well, currently, the editors are hard at work on the initial revisions behind the following content:

Tips for running the game, including GM advice, suggestions for Arcs and Episodes, and a full table for randomly generating demon names.
A sample Episode, based off of the first episode of the revived series Burning Fires of Youth!!! The Demon Lord's Return
A handy episode guide for the series that also serves as a guide to the game world, so even people who haven't seen the series can understand what's going on.
A few sample characters to make things easier for new players and GMs looking to run a quick game.

The graphics department is hard at work preparing templates for layout, so as soon as the text is finalized, we'll be able to quickly transfer the text to the final layout. Backers will receive this as soon as it is ready, minus any art assets - consider this a preview of the final book.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 00:59

Hedningen: May 4, 2013; Enough sideburns to last a lifetime.

It's time for another update!!!

Burning Fires of Youth!!! - Week 3: Let's Get Those Spirits Burning

Here is the rought draft of Burning Fires of Youth!!!

Like all Kickstarters, I've delivered something that resembles the product in the form of a Google Doc for playtesting, including a sample adventure. Had no time for graphic design thanks to complicated dog fostering, but everything necessary for a playtest should be there.

In the spirit of Kickstarter, I never bothered finishing the table of random Demon Name Generation - I'll need to do that at some point. Perhaps a bonus supplement of randomized names for all sorts of things for anyone who might enjoy this bizarre game.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 01:23

Hedningen: May 4, 2013; Enough sideburns to last a lifetime.

Well, here are playtest notes for Legend Divide.

It was quite an interesting game to go through! Even if it took me way too long to get my notes from the session and post session player responses.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2017 22:17

Hedningen: May 4, 2013; Enough sideburns to last a lifetime.

Thanks to the updated deadline, my group will be playtesting Free Cog's game Armilage on Tuesday. Playtest notes should be posted later in the week.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2017 01:09

Hedningen: May 4, 2013; Enough sideburns to last a lifetime.

Armilage Playtest Notes are live.

General impressions: could use some reorganization, consolidated world information, and more information for running the game for players. Everything else is in the notes.

Let me know if any clarification is needed!

# ¿ Mar 10, 2017 22:40

Hedningen: May 4, 2013; Enough sideburns to last a lifetime.

Playtest for Davin's Little Miracles is finished! General thoughts (in case tomorrow gets away from me and I end up being unable to post more later):

Gameplay notes:

Game was run with myself, my wife, and oft-mentioned playtests who ended up getting large amounts of thanks and beer C. and E. All experienced, apart from my wife.
Gameplay was done using a rotating GM. The game works fairly well with minimal intervention on a GM's part - the lack of rolling and the storytelling nature make this easy. For this test, every player made a god/goddess and rotated as GM after scenes were resolved.
Character creation/city building work well in a group setting. Great chance to dictate the flow and feel of the setting, and adding additional features for new sessions seems pretty easy.
The charts help with the tracker of Aether/Grounding. Shifting from one side to the other led to some cool roleplaying.
Mechanical guts are good, as far as we could tell - it's a great game for relaxing and telling little stories.

Things needed:

Examples and some fiction, really. The system works pretty well, and the narrative elements seem to flow pretty easily.
More explanation of the GM-lite nature, perhaps even suggesting table consensus or the rotating system used. It should be pretty frontloaded that this is an intended way to play.
There were a few references to tables and other elements in GSS. We didn't have a copy, so couldn't comment on those. Maybe write some new tables, or make it clearer that, for best effect, players should have a copy.

Overall, very fun game. My wife has requested I keep running it, so I'll take that as a success for it.

Favorite moment: helping a little girl find her puppy. Power backfire attracts all the stray dogs around, along with missing pets. Organize impromptu adoption clinic. "Accidentally" backfire by the God of Having A Really Good Night Out, causing city inspectors to start drunkenly singing, bypassing permit requirements and leading to frantic attempts to help them keep their jobs by covering for us and claiming they simply forgot to file paperwork. Doggos adopted, goddess of Home and Comfort adopts one of the last dogs as a constant companion through the rest of the game. Everything works out for the best.

With that, my third and final playtest for this contest is finished! Thank you all for writing such cool games - got a chance to write my own weird stuff, and play games of settlement building and adventure, sci-fi military action and robots, and delightful divinity chilling in the city.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2017 04:10

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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 10:28

Hedningen: May 4, 2013; Enough sideburns to last a lifetime.

Okay, it's time for the final contest update!

Delivered before other, likely better games people paid actual money for via Kickstarter, here's the final contest draft of Burning Fires of Youth!!! The Demon Lord's Return.

Now available in pdf form!

# ¿ Mar 20, 2017 00:19

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